Milky Way Heavier Than Thought, and Spinning Faster 285
An anonymous reader writes "The Milky Way is spinning much faster and has 50 per cent more mass than previously believed. This means the Milky Way is equivalent in size to our neighbor Andromeda — instead of being the little sister in the local galaxy group, as had been believed. One implication of this new finding is that we may collide with Andromeda sooner than we had thought, in 2 or 3 billion years instead of 5."
hello... (Score:2, Informative)
Mass != weight
Re:The good news (Score:3, Informative)
I know you're trying to be funny but when the two galaxies do meet, the odds are no stars will collide.
Re:hello... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:hello... (Score:2, Informative)
No, he's pointing out the pretty basic fact that mass and weight are measures of two different things.
Re:The good news (Score:5, Informative)
the future cockroach decedents
They'll be the descendants. We'll be the decedents.
rj
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you, makes much more sense now. Agence France-Presse strikes again. They converted mph to km/hr VERY precisely.
965,600 km/h = 600,000 mph
804,672 km/h = 500,000 mph
Abstract of presentation (10aPT Tue Jan 6, if you are in Long Beach CA) is at http://tinyurl.com/9d5rec [tinyurl.com].
Re:hello... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The good news (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, at the rate our sun is heating up [bbc.co.uk] as a natural part of its life cycle, we've got about 500 million years to get off this rock. So, we don't get to see that firey end anyway.
Re:hello... (Score:3, Informative)
A massive object in near-zero gravity weighs less than a smaller object in very strong gravity... that's sort of what weight means.
I agree it's pedantry to insist that the headline be perfectly accurate, but you're still wrong.
Re:Science (Score:3, Informative)
Still, it is nice to know we're not in the pipsqueak galaxy. Hoorah!?!?
Well, we never really were. The Local Group contains a few dozen galaxies, of which the Milky Way was already known to be one of the "big 3" (Andromeda, The Milky Way, and The Triangulum galaxies all being pretty big in comparison to most of the others in the group). It's just that now instead of being #2 we might just be #1 :).
Re:They've already filmed it... (Score:3, Informative)
They also tend to fling bits and pieces of themselves into the cosmic void soon after the union. Sometimes those pieces will amount to a new galaxy, but most tend to linger around in an eccentric orbit, trying to escape but never managing to achieve enough velocity.